Aamir Khan funds furniture rental startup Furlenco

Furlenco is a Bengaluru – based furniture rental startup. In an event that is sure to give a shot in the arm to the business of the startup, one of Bollywood’s most famous actors, Aamir Khan, announced yesterday (12/12/2017) that he has invested US $300,000 in the startup. Furlenco was founded by Ajith Karimpana in 2011. It is a platform where users can rent home furniture on a subscription basis. The startup currently operates in Bengaluru, Delhi – NCR, Mumbai and Pune. Prior to this round of funding from Aamir Khan, the startup had raised US $30 million through a mix of equity and debtfunding from Lightbox Ventures and Axis Capital. Of late, quite a few Bollywood stars and cricketers like Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Shilpa Shetty, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh have shown interest in investing in startups and this event falls in line with that trend. Aamir Khan, however, faced strong criticism from people for his ‘intolerance’ remark made at Ramnath Goenka Awards event in 2015 after which, Snapdeal had to face a huge downfall in its business and removed him as their brand ambassador. Aamir Khan has now decided not to embrace the brand, Furlenco and will only make investments in it. Furlenco will use the investment from Aamir Khan to upgrade its technology platform and increase its footprint in India. Read more on Investments

The other furniture rental startups to get funded this year (2017) include the furniture rental startup, Rentickle, which secured US $4 million in Series A round of investments during December, this year. Furlenco itself secured US $30 million in Series B round of funding from Lightbox Ventures during October 2016 and the furniture rental startup, Cityfurnish, secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Brand Capital during July 2016. Read more on Startup News

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